


Idle Hands at Last undone

by MorningsofGold



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, background kavinsky guest appearance, dubiously dating, jealous!gansey and reassuring!ronan, late night softcore monmouth fightclub, light d/s because of the Gansey Voice, wrestle kisses and consensual grinding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 15:31:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11039061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorningsofGold/pseuds/MorningsofGold
Summary: Nightmares?” Ronan asked. His voice was still hoarse, but it was softer.Gansey deliberated how much to share for a moment before saying,“Flashbacks.”Ronan took Gansey’s shoulders, squaring them like a boxer’s before a fight, and kicked his legs shoulder-width apart.“Hit me.”“What? Ronan, it’s the wee hours, I’m not going to spar with you.”“Whatever,” Ronan said, and promptly put Gansey into a headlock.





	Idle Hands at Last undone

Ronan tolerated the shuffling and banging outside his bedroom door for roughly six minutes before wrenching off his headphones and hauling himself out of bed, and in light of the fact that it was two in the morning, he considered those six minutes generous. He kicked open his bedroom door and leaned on the doorjamb, massaging the space between his eyes while inhaling deeply through his nose.

“Gansey,” He said, voice hoarse from sleep. “What the hell, man.”

  
Gansey’s head snapped up, and his eyes glinted in the faint light. Ronan expected to find him toiling over his miniature Henrietta, but the glue and cardboard lay abandoned on the ground along with Gansey’s glasses, which meant that he had given up on producing anything worthwhile tonight. Gansey looked a little strung out, the muscles of his crossed arms sharply defined in the moonlight falling in through the warped glass of Monmouths’ windows.

  
“Ronan,” Gansey said, as though suddenly remembering he didn’t live alone. Gansey’s thumb was in his mouth, teeth worrying at an already ragged fingernail. Ronan knew Gansey well enough to associate the gesture with a certain level of distress, and so rubbed a hand across the back of his shaved head, trying to wake himself up a bit more.

  
“What’s the racket about? I thought you were Noah up to poltergeist shit.”

  
Gansey shrugged, as if he had no idea how the sounds of books being plucked up and discarded, or pencils rolling across floorboards, or bare feet pacing the length of Monmouth’s second story, could qualify as “racket”. Gansey took a few steps into a strong shaft of moonlight, and Ronan noticed his bronze hair was mussed from nervous fingers and the front of his T-shirt was stained with a faint triangle of sweat.

  
“Nightmares?” Ronan asked. His voice was still hoarse, but it was softer.

  
Gansey deliberated how much to share for a moment before saying,

  
“Flashbacks.”

  
Ronan nodded, as if this settled something. He picked up his leather jacket up off the floor and started rooting around in the pockets for the keys to the Camaro.

  
Gansey shook his head. “No. I don’t want to leave Monmouth tonight.”

  
Ronan sighed like a martyr, but slid out of his jacket. He had fallen asleep in the previous day’s black jeans and a matching tank top that showed off his tattoo particularly well.  
“Then what?”

  
“Then nothing. It’s alright, Ronan, go back to bed.”

  
“No, I’m up now. So are you. Way up.” Ronan nodded at Gansey’s feet, which were tracing a nervous, aimless path across the same few square feet of floor. “You’re practically vibrating, man.”

  
“I just need to burn off some of the adrenaline,” Gansey said, consonants muffled by his thumbnail. “I’ll be alright.”

  
“Not if you keep trying to crawl into books,” Ronan said, closing the distance between himself and Gansey. He tapped his temple knowingly. “Can’t get out of your head by using it. Why can’t you race cars like a normal person? Maybe you just need to get laid.”

  
Gansey gave Ronan a withering look.

  
“You’re a degenerate, Lynch.”

  
Ronan shrugged, as though this was an objective fact instead of a dig at his character. The he took Gansey’s shoulders, squaring them like a boxer’s before a fight, and kicked his legs shoulder-width apart.

“Hit me.”

“What? Ronan, it’s the wee hours, I’m not going to spar with you.”

  
“Whatever,” Ronan said, and promptly put Gansey into a headlock.

  
Gansey squalled in protestation, throwing a poorly-aimed elbow into Ronan’s gut. Ronan huffed out a laugh, tightening his grip. At 5’8, Gansey was already at a disadvantage, as Ronan cleared six feet and had inherited a sturdy build from his father. But Gansey had spent more hours throwing punches with Ronan than he would admit to in mixed company, and knew how to play to his strengths.

  
Reaching up behind Ronan’s head, Gansey clamped a hand around the larger boys’ face and bent him backward before sweeping his legs out from under him. Gansey was on the ground a half-second after Ronan, wrestling his arms up around his head and pinning him by the wrists.

  
“I. Am not. Doing this,” Gansey huffed, his knees digging into Ronan’s ribs hard enough to bruise.

  
Ronan laughed, the reckless, breathless laugh that always sounded to Gansey like a quarter past midnight and 75 on the speedometer.

  
“Sure, sure.”

  
“Seriously,” Gansey snarled, pressing down harder.

  
Ronan showed Gansey his teeth. It was hard to say if it was a smile.

  
“Whatever you say, Dick.”

  
Fire flashed across Gansey’s features, and Ronan saw something snap behind his eyes. Gansey let go of one of Ronan’s wrists to throw a punch, a proper one, but it was the wrong move. Ronan hooked his free arm around Gansey’s chest and one of his legs through Gansey’s own and flipped the smaller boy over on his back, hard.

  
Gansey wheezed in shock, but he was also laughing, and a knife-like grin split Ronan’s face as he tried to pin Gansey down.

  
“Who uses their legs in a fistfight?” Gansey panted. He managed to look put-upon despite clawing at Ronan's face.

  
“Not my fault you favor your upper body,” Ronan grunted, trying to keep his hold on Gansey. Gansey was slippery, he would give him that. “Stupid of you.”

  
Ronan had the dim awareness that he sounded just like Niall, but that didn’t bother him too much in this moment. Fighting had always been something his father had been good at it; it was nothing Ronan could feel ashamed of.

  
Gansey coiled his body up tightly and kneed Ronan low in the stomach, dangerously close the groin.

  
“Easy,” Ronan hissed. Gansey braced his hands against Ronan’s shoulders and continued to wrest himself further out of Ronan’s grip. Ronan scrambled across the floorboards, knees bruising, and dragged Gansey bodily back under him. Gansey was by no means a tiny boy; but Ronan could manhandle him in the right circumstances. Gansey used his forearms to deflect Ronan’s blows, and managed to get a few strikes in before Ronan clamped a hand over his face and pressed his head into the ground.

  
Gansey's eyebrows drew together sharply. He slammed the heel of his hand into Ronan's sternum, winding the larger boy. Ronan swore, almost losing his footing, and Gansey caught his wrist. Robbed of his leverage, Ronan crashed onto his elbow. Gansey refused to release him. He drew Ronan's hand to his nose and mouth, his eyes clouded over with something tempest-dark. Ronan's heart battered against his ribs as Gansey's lips, warm and sweat-slicked, ghosted across his fingers.

  
"You've been smoking," Gansey spat, like a curse.

  
Ronan re-arranged his features into something cruel because they currently felt a little too raw, and wrenched his wrist out of Gansey's grip.

  
"Bullshit."

  
"I can smell it on you, Ronan."

  
"So what."

  
"So you only smoke when you've been with fucking Kavinsky."

 

"Language, Gansey! Jesus," Ronan said, with false distress and a half-swallowed snicker.

  
But Gansey wasn't laughing. The last time Ronan had smoked in front of Gansey, it was at one of Kavinsky’s parties. It was far from Gansey's' scene, and he didn't like the way Ronan looked in the light coming off Kavinsky's bonfires, but he had tried to make an appearance all the same. He hadn't wanted there to be any corner of Ronan's life where the light of Gansey's mediating friendship didn't touch; he had told himself it was for Ronan's own good but if Gansey was being honest with himself, he knew there was more to it. Certainly, he didn’t want Ronan running off with Kavinsky to race and pop pills because he didn’t want to have to bail Ronan out of jail or identify him in a morgue, but he also didn’t want Ronan running of with Kavinksy, full stop. If it was anyone else, Gansey could stomach all manner of personality shifts and communication breakdowns, and barring that, he could always make new friends. He had had plenty of practice. But Ronan wasn’t “friends”. Ronan was home. And Gansey wasn’t willing to wager that for the world.

  
So Gansey had stood sullenly leaning against the Pig, lukewarm Coors fizzing in a red Solo cup in his hand, as Ronan shoved Prokopenko around amiably and swapped slurs with Kavinsky. Gansey’s mouth was dry; he had hardly touched his drink. It wasn’t that Gansey was against underage drinking on principle; he was more against the tactlessness that arose when young people binge-drank in groups, and at any rate he preferred scotch. Or a nice, mellow red. He had sighed wistfully at the memory of the fantastic vintage Helen had shared with him over Labor Day, then in irritation as Ronan had accepted a cigarette from Kavinsky’s bruised fingers.

  
Kavinsky had noticed. He always noticed.

  
“Daddy’s looking a little pissed,” He had snickered, stepping close to Ronan to ignite his cigarette with a gaudy dragon lighter from his back pocket.

  
“Come on, K,” Skov had said, rolling his eyes and blowing out a thin stream of marijuana smoke. Or was it Swan? Gansey was usually excellent with names, but he never bothered with Kavinsky’s crew. They were just an extension of the leering, thuggish boy; unintelligent, uninteresting, and absolutely unworthy of Gansey’s attention.

  
Ronan had murmured something indecipherable in the direction of the collar of Kavinsky’s battered and unbuttoned short-sleeve shirt, under which he wore his eternal white wifebeater, and Gansey’s ears burned. He had thought about turning up the music pumping from the Pig’s speakers to drown out whatever he was feeling, but Kavinsky had insisted on something with vile lyrics and an overabundance of 808 drums, so Gansey decided against it.

  
Ronan wandered over to Gansey, holding his smoldering cigarette tight between thumb and forefinger like a joint. He leaned his hip against the driver’s side door of the Pig and extended the dying Pall Mall to Gansey like a peace offering. Gansey had raised the cigarette to his mouth in one elegant gesture.

  
Ronan had thought the prop would make Gansey look more natural in Kavinsky’s world, but as his friend took a few courtesy puffs, dangling the cigarette delicately between his fingers like a debutante, Ronan was once again faced with Gansey’s otherness, the fact that he had probably only ever smoked a celebratory cigar with statesman after his mother had won some nomination or other. Gansey had declined to meet Ronan’s eyes, and Ronan had pushed off from the Pig with a sneer. The next thing Gansey saw was Ronan shotgunning a long drag from Kavinsky’s lips, Kavinsky’s hand spread possessively across the back of Ronan’s skull, and that was enough.

  
“We’re leaving," Gansey had said, stabbing the cigarette out crisply.

  
Ronan almost didn’t hear him; Kavinsky was pressing another Guinness into his hands and Prokopenko had made him laugh with some filthy joke. But he registered the sentence once Gansey had slid into the driver’s seat of the Pig, trusting Ronan to follow. In the rearview mirror, Ronan’s eyes had been swimming with conflict. Gansey had turned the volume down on Kanye West so he wouldn’t have to raise his voice. He so hated raising his voice.

  
“I won’t say it twice,” He said, voice settling into the low, steely place that told Ronan Gansey wasn’t asking anymore. Calling it a demand would be reductionist; that implied a stridentness totally foreign to the self-assuredness of Gansey’s tone. When Gansey used that voice, he could command Ronan the way Adam wished he could command a room: smoothly and without question.

  
Ronan had slammed the door when he had gotten into the passenger seat of the Pig. But he had gotten in.

  
Kavinsky had used his middle finger to tug down his lower lip and flash the ugly word tattooed inside as they sped away.

  
Gansey had declined to occupy the same space as Kavinsky for more than five minutes after that night. But now the scent of smoke on Ronan’s skin, dusky and sensual and flagrant with indiscretion, was enough to bring the memory crashing back.

  
“I’ve got a life outside of Monmouth,” Ronan said. “Deal with it.”

  
And just like that the fire behind Gansey’s eyes was smothered in something black and disappointed. Ronan wanted to feel sorry for what he’d said, but apologies weren’t in his nature, so he spat on the floor instead. Defiant.

  
“I won’t begrudge you that,” Gansey said. His tussle with Ronan had stretched the neck out of his expensive Vineyard Vines t-shirt, the one cut to look familiar and washed a garish shade of faded pink, and the curve of his collarbone was reddened and exposed. Ronan looked for too long, and he wanted to feel sorry for that too.

  
Ronan stood and shoved his hands in his pockets, his mouth screwed up nastily. “I’m going back to bed.”

  
There was something sickening becoming about Gansey on the ground, looking up at Ronan with flush cheeks and angry eyes, and something more becoming still about the fact Ronan didn't actually feel like he had much power in the situation despite Gansey being the one on the floor.

  
Ronan clenched his fists in his pockets where Gansey couldn’t see them and turned to go.

  
“Ronan,” Gansey said, and Ronan heard it, the heaviness in the vowels, the crispness of the consonants that turned his own name into a spoken magic that could work terrible wonders.  
A shiver crept up Ronan’s spine but he hid it well, pausing without turning back to Gansey.

  
“Yeah?”

  
“We aren’t done here.”

Ronan’s eyes slid shut, just for one second, and he mouthed an oath. Then he turned around and said,

  
“Yeah?"

  
Gansey, Ronan saw, was on his feet again. And he was grinning, grinning reckless and broad like Ronan hadn’t seen since Blue, since Adam. Ronan quirked his eyebrow, and it was the only invitation Gansey needed.

  
Gansey hurled his entire body in Ronan’s direction, half trying to climb the taller boy, half trying to wrangle him to the ground. Unlike Ronan, Gansey’s father had never taught him how to fight. Gansey’s father had only been punched once in his life, by a Democrat at a cocktail mixer after a heated discussion on health care reform. Richard Gansey II had dabbed the blood from the corner of his mouth with a monogrammed handkerchief, and promptly sued the Democrat for all he was worth. Niall preferred to handle his disputes the old-fashioned way, and had brought Ronan up to bare-knuckle box a fair fight Belfast-style: until someone hit the ground and stayed down. Ronan had tried to pass this knowledge onto Gansey, who ignored the bits about left hooks and sparring rules and only ever seemed to latch onto the fighting-to-win bit. Gansey didn’t mean to, but he was a dirty fighter. He was entirely reckless with his own well-being, thrashed wildly when defeat seemed imminent, and would have pulled hair, if Ronan had any.

  
Ronan would be lying if he said he didn’t love it,

  
Gansey had an arm slung around the back of Ronan’s neck and was trying to force him to the ground while Ronan used everything he had to keep his feet under him. The two boys careened around the dark second floor of Monmouth like binary stars locked in a death dance, toppling stacks of books and communicating entirely in gasping laughter and grunted profanity. The air was thick with dust and the scent of Gansey’s sweat and shampoo and Ronan felt a little high as he shoved Gansey roughly against the desk. Gansey shoved Ronan away, even harder, and kept shoving. The world tilted on its axis when Gansey’s breath splayed across Ronan’s neck, and it took Ronan a moment to realize they had staggered onto the main street of Gansey’s Henrietta and nearly demolished the watertower.

  
“Waitwaitwait, shit, shit!” Ronan exclaimed, hands grasping Gansey’s forearms as he rocked unsteadily. All the antagonism melted off his features. His eyes were full of pure concern for the precious and defenseless. It was a look Gansey thought he would never see directed at anything but Chainsaw, and it made him laugh helplessly.

  
“Ronan-” He began with a fond smile, but Ronan heard a softness creeping in he didn’t want to deal with, not here, not now, and so he maneuvered Gansey off main street with a powerful shove to his hips. Gansey skittered further away than he expected. The back of Gansey’s calves hit his rickety bed, which clattered unsteadily. Gansey wiped a hand over his mouth, trying to smother his laughter and say something else. Ronan decided he was absolutely against talking right now, and so he threw himself against the smaller boy, trying to re-ignite the fight.

  
This didn’t go well for either of them, as Gansey had no floorspace to brace himself with and therefore put up no resistance to Ronan’s brute force. Both the boys ended up sprawled on tousled sheets in a tangle of limbs, but Gansey recovered faster, and clambered atop Ronan in a flash.

  
Before Ronan had a chance to spit out an insult, Gansey’s hand was around his throat, heavy and warm and applying just enough pressure to make Ronan deliriously aware of his own pulse. He wasn't choking Ronan, not really, he was squeezing just hard enough to prove that he had won, but Ronan’s felt oxygen deprived all the same.

  
“Ha!” Gansey crowed triumphantly. “Checkmate, Lynch.”

  
“Congradufuckinglations,” Ronan rasped, but the word took too many breaths to form. He could feel the air he gulped down scraping past Gansey’s fingers on its way to his lungs, and….God, he had forgotten how to breathe.

  
When Ronan raced, he experienced the same intoxicating heat that was crawling up his neck now, but he also felt like all the lines of his body had been blurred into soft focus, like he was fading into the background noise of crashing plastic bumpers and pounding synth beats. The numbness was part of the appeal, but this, somehow, was different. There was something about Gansey straddling his chest with an imperious curve to his mouth that made Ronan feel hyper-real, hyper-seen.

  
Ronan was terrified, and he never wanted it to end.

  
Gansey’s eyes narrowed a fraction as he watched the color rise in Ronan’s cheeks. A calculation or two ran behind his eyes, and then he seemed to settle on an answer. One of his eyebrows twitched up in newfound interest, and sweat broke out on Ronan’s forehead. His chest felt tight. So did his jeans.

  
The steadying pressure on Ronan’s throat shifted as Gansey gently ran his thumb along the fluttering pulse shooting up Ronan’s neck between the sinews. If he noticed that Ronan had stopped trying to shove him away, and that the tips of his fingers were entirely frozen at the edge of Gansey’s ribcage, he didn’t let on.

  
“You know, you can make someone pass out doing this,” Gansey remarked quietly, as if observing any other sort of natural phenomenon. He was testing the weight of this new kind of kingliness. Testing himself.

  
Testing Ronan.

  
“No shit,” Ronan growled, and bit Gansey in the wrist.

  
Gansey hand snapped up to grip Ronan’s jaw and wrench his head back over the end of the bed. This time, he wasn’t gentle.

  
“No teeth,” Gansey ordered, and it was an order, but with his chin pointing to the ceiling, Ronan couldn’t see Gansey’s eyes so he couldn’t tell if Gansey really knew that. He could never tell if Gansey really knew how easy it was for him to twist Ronan into knots, to stir up deep, dark waters in the pit of Ronan’s stomach that made him ready to rip the throat out of anyone if Gansey only asked. Ronan didn’t know if the English language had a word for the ferocious swell of pride he felt when Gansey looked at him with approval, or the electric thrill that shot through his body when Gansey grinned at him across the Pig as he inched it over the speed limit, but this…This was it.

  
“I bet you say that to all the boys,” Ronan said, and the attempt at humor felt weak, transparent.

  
“No. Just you.”

  
“I’m not gonna tap out, if that’s what you’re angling for.”

  
Gansey made an incredulous noise in the back of his throat, then dipped his head down and bit the juncture of Ronan’s neck and shoulder.

  
Ronan gasped, his hand tangling in Gansey’s hair without needing to be told to. For an instant, Ronan couldn’t see a thing, and then awareness came crashing back down around him. Gansey had just…Had he-?

  
The little bastard.

  
Ronan couldn’t lie to himself. The brief sweep of Ganseys tongue across his neck and surprisingly pain of ivy-league-white teeth digging into his skin was enough to make him forget his own name. There was a large part of him that wanted to go slack under Gansey’s weight and see if he would continue this torturous exchange. But Ronan Lynch was nothing if not a determined fighter, and he refused to lose this fight to dirty tactics.

  
Ronan’s cinched his fingers in Gansey’s hair and yanked. Gansey reared back, sucking air in through his teeth.

  
“That’s not fair,” He hissed.

  
Ronan threw him down bodily on the other end of the bed so Gansey’s head was, more or less, on the pillow.

  
“That chokehold shit was the antithesis of fair,” Ronan snarled, but there was a wild sort of mirth in his eyes that made Gansey grin.

  
“The inglorious Ronan Lynch using a four-syllable word? I never thought I’d see the day.”

  
“I go to Aglionby too, asshole,” Ronan said, and dragged Gansey by his ankle back across the bed.

  
The two boys grappled, all akimbo legs and palms slipping on dingy sheets yanked free from their moorings. Ronan could hardly tell his sharp breaths from Gansey’s, and Gansey’s forearms and neck were hot to the touch. Ronan’s skin buzzed with a heady delight, and he hardly felt any pain when Gansey kneed his thighs and raked his short nails across Ronan’s chest. Gansey’s eyes were burning with determination, with the same passion that propelled his hunt for Glendower, and Ronan couldn’t help but smile wide and hungry at the sight of it.

  
Their foreheads knocked together as Ronan tried to wrestle Gansey into submission, but Gansey was having none of it and pushed back even harder. He turned his head this way and that trying to get away, and his face was inches away from Ronan’s until it wasn’t, until Gansey’s cheek slid past Ronan’s and their lips grazed one another. Ronan tightened his grip and hoisted Gansey even closer, and Gansey made a soft noise of approval. Ronan pressed his lips to the corner of Gansey's mouth, begging permission.  
Gansey’s muscles were tense under Ronan’s body; he was still struggling to free his trapped hand from Ronan’s grasp, but he was breathing out into Ronan’s mouth and kissing him again and again with parted lips.

  
The tip of Gansey’s tongue scorched against Ronan’s and Ronan shifted Gansey’s weight so he was pressed as tightly against him as possible. He hoisted Gansey’s legs around his waist and Gansey spread his hand across the back of Ronan’s skull tight as a vise. Ronan had lost track of who was winning. It seemed like both now, or neither.

  
Ronan lifted the edges of Gansey’s shirt and brushed his fingertips across the other boy’s ribs, breaking the kiss only to suckle at the tanned expanse of Gansey’s neck. Gansey tipped his head back into the wrecked bedding, knotted his hands into Ronan’s tank top, and let out a moan that would have been embarrassing if their only other roommate wasn’t dead, intermittently existent, and absolutely not entitled to an opinion,

  
It wasn’t that it hadn’t happened before. Gansey had known Ronan since they were fifteen years old; there had been nervous kisses in the back of trucks with shoulders touching and memorial day fireworks overhead, and hungry kisses that tasted like fireball whiskey with someone’s back pressed against the dingy basement wall at an otherwise forgotten house party, and languid kisses with study materials spread out around them and the stress of finals melting from tight shoulders.

  
It had never occurred to Gansey to question these intermittent events, as he was certain all friends must want to be this close when they needed to say something without talking, nor had it occurred to Ronan, who had no grey area in being mildly interested in someone’s existence and being willing to kiss them, or die for them. It had always felt right, apropos to whatever mood was hanging in the air, and it wasn’t that this, panting and wracked with adrenaline in the quietness of a darkened Monmouth, didn’t feel right. It just felt different. Gansey, Ronan realized, was what was different.

  
Gansey rolled Ronan over onto his back and kissed him with absolute determination, straddling his chest while Ronan attempted to catch his breath. Ronan was familiar with the sex drive that lurked under piles of history books and newspaper clippings that must have made up Gansey’s subconscious, but there was an urgentness to the way Gansey rolled his hips into Ronan’s that had Ronan digging his fingers into Gansey’s thighs and wondering, not for the first time, if this counted as something he would have to take to confession.

  
“I don’t want you to see Kavinsky anymore,” Gansey said, between kisses, and it took Ronan a bleary moment to register it had been said at all.

  
“What?” Ronan rasped, his mouth reddened and swollen.

  
Gansey spread his hands out beside Ronan’s shoulders and pressed his forehead against his friend’s, breathing heavily. He was composing himself, Ronan realized. Whatever had been running the show for the last five minutes was not the Gansey of tidy elevator pitches about field trips to Wales or the Gansey of quiet, marathon sessions of late-night Henrietta-building, or even the Gansey of out-of-breath sophomore year kisses in the grass after he had beat Ronan in a sprint across the Barns.

  
Ronan’s fingers were hooked into the waistband of Gansey’s sweatpants, and he tugged Gansey closer to get his attention.

  
“Gansey. What?”

  
“He’s a nightmare,” Gansey said, with more bitterness than Ronan was used to hearing out of his mouth. “I don’t like what he does to you.”

  
Ronan snorted. “I’m nothing around Kavinsky I’m not with myself.”

  
“That’s not what I mean. He’s awful to you. He’s awful. You’re worth ten of him.”

  
Ronan searched Gansey’s face for a moment, his dark eyebrows drawn together, wary. He never responded well to Gansey restricting his movements, but this seemed like something…different.

  
“I can’t make promises.”

  
Gansey nodded heavily, as though he had expected as much. Ronan brought a hand up to smooth Gansey’s hair back from his face and nuzzled him briefly with his nose, a gesture so tender Ronan didn’t know he had it in him until it was out. Then he said,

  
“Kavinsky’s not...Listen, you aren’t the same.” Then, with exasperation, “I can’t believe I have to even say that shit out loud.”

  
Gansey took Ronan’s face in his hands and pressed his lips to his own, breathing out unevenly. Then he sat back on Ronan’s lap, looked around at Monmouth like he was considering redecorating, like he would rather study peeling plaster than meet Ronan’s eyes, and folded his arms.

  
“Good. So long as you know…” Here Gansey faltered. Had Ronan ever seen Gansey fumble a sentence outright? The larger boy propped himself up on his elbows and scoffed.

  
“What? That I’m yours?”

  
Gansey’s eyes answered for him, and Ronan drew in a breath. He stared up at Gansey for a few seconds, then said flatly,

  
“You’re kidding.”

  
Gansey looked a little haunted. He was afraid, Ronan realized. Afraid of losing his death grip on Ronan.

  
“Say it,” He said quietly, and Ronan shuddered. “Say I won’t wake up one day to find you gone.”

  
Ronan grabbed Gansey’s chin in his hand and yanked him into a kiss. Someone’s lip met teeth a little too sharply, and Ronan tasted blood blossom in his mouth.

  
“I’m not going anywhere, get it?” Ronan growled into Gansey’s mouth. “You couldn’t fucking make me.”

  
Gansey twined his fingers into the straps of Ronan’s tank top like they were the only thing keeping him from drowning, and said,

  
“Good. I won’t ask twice. Also.” Gansey ran his tongue up the curve of Ronan’s neck and nipped at his earlobe. “I’m winning.”

  
Ronan’s eyes narrowed in unmitigated venom, and Gansey howled with laughter. Unceremoniously, Ronan dumped Gansey off the bed and slid on top of him. Their scuffling left smudges on the dusty Monmouth floor, which hadn’t been cleaned in recent memory.

  
Ronan pinned Gansey’s wrists above his head and dragged his mouth up the length of Gansey’s neck, all the way from the hollow at the base of his throat to the delicate, hidden place behind his ear.

  
“Over my dead body,” Ronan growled, and slotted his leg between Gansey’s so their bodies were pressed flush together. Gansey made a sound that could be only be called a whimper and arched his back up towards Ronan. God, he was loud. Ronan had lost count of the times he had clamped his hand over Gansey’s mouth in the back of The Pig to keep the whole of Henrietta from noticing them.

  
Ronan would be lying if he said he didn’t love it.

  
“God, you look...” Ronan muttered. Gansey dug his fingers into Ronan’s tattoo while Ronan pressed patient kisses into Gansey’s neck. He was already hard in his sweatpants, and Ronan felt a tremor run through his legs.

  
“If you’re trying to distract me,” Gansey managed. “It isn’t going to work.”

  
Gansey jutted his shoulder up towards Ronan, clipping him in the jaw. Ronan shoved Gansey’s wrists higher above his head and gripped them both in one hand, then dug the fingers of his other hand into Gansey’s hip. He pressed Gansey down into the ground and rolled his hips into Gansey’s lap agonizingly slowly.

  
“Oh my God,” Gansey groaned, his adams apple bobbing in his throat as he swallowed. “I’m going to kill you.”

  
Ronan pulled the collar of that stupid salmon shirt down with his teeth and kissed Gansey’s collarbone. Gansey tightened his thighs around Ronan’s and tried valiantly to flip the larger boy over. A laugh rippled through Ronan’s chest as he slid his hands down Gansey’s arms to cup his face while he pressed his lips to Gansey’s.

  
“You’ll get it eventually,” Ronan said, a taunting tone mingling in his voice with genuine pleasure. He ran the tip of his tongue across Gansey’s lower lip, and he tasted heat and iron. It was Gansey who was bleeding, he realized, even though he couldn't see it in the faint light. Ronan pressed his lips lightly to the throbbing cut. “You’re getting stronger.”

  
Gansey made a perturbed sound from his disadvantaged position, but his cheeks were rosebud pink.

  
“Mmm,” Ronan hummed. It was a short syllable, one he favored in lieu of actual words, but he had a way of making it convey everything he needed to express. This one was appraising, and not in the least disappointed. “I like you like this.”

“How’s that?” Gansey shot back, trying to sound cavalier despite the obvious rasp in his voice. “Underneath you?”

  
Ronan shook his head into the crook of Gansey’s neck, his eyebrows knitting together. He tried to dreg up the proper word.

  
“Relaxed, I guess.” Gansey felt Ronan smile against the skin of his neck. “But yeah, you’re pretty hot on your back, too.”

  
Gansey slapped Ronan’s shoulder, but it was half-hearted. His hand lingered on Ronan’s back, fingers splayed out across the knob of spine at the base of his friend’s neck. Gansey hooked a thumb under the collar of Ronan’s tank top, lazily stroking the ridged outline of Ronan’s tattoo. Ronan breathed in deeply, dropping his chin to his chest. It had been Gansey who had gotten him through the sleepless nights and painful wound-dressing of a fresh tattoo, and Gansey who had washed and lotioned the enormous back piece twice a day after each seession. it had become a silent ritual in the rawmonths after Niall Lynch’s death: Gansey kneeling behind Ronan on the bed that never got made in the room where the shades were rarely lifted, no sound between them except the low drone of Ronan’s electronica. Some days Gansey was the only human being Ronan let get close enough to him to exchange words, much less touch him. And even though he didn’t exactly love behind beholden to another person in that way and sneered every time Gansey slapped down his hand when he went to itch at his burning skin, Ronan knew that he probably would have gone even farther off the deep end without the small, steadying ritual.

  
Gansey was still grinding absentmindedly against Ronan and making content, pleasured noises every once in awhile, but he had fallen still and quiet otherwise. His warm muscles were starting to soften as exhaustion settled in. Maybe the adrenaline was finally spent.

  
“You’re getting tired,” Ronan murmured. “Maybe we should go to bed.”

  
Gansey ran his hand down Ronan’s back and tugged up the bottom of Ronan’s shirt. He slid his hand up the small of Ronan’s back and rested it there. For the first time all night, Ronan felt drowsy. The weight of Gansey’s hand on his back was as soothing as the weight of his crucifix dropping over his neck every morning. It felt like security, and protection from all the evil in the world.

  
“Not yet,” Gansey said thoughtfully, and it was hard to say if it was a command or not. Ronan settled in all the same, finding a more comfortable way to press himself against the warmth of the other boy .Gansey’s fingers found the outline of fleur de lis of ferns on his back, and Ronan’s eyes slid shut.

  
“Ronan,” Gansey said.

  
“Hmm?”

  
“I don't care if you hook up with Kavinsky or....God knows what else, I just--”

  
“Oh yeah you do. When he said hey to me in the hallway yesterday I thought you were gonna stab him in the neck with your pencil.”

  
“That’s what I mean, Ronan. He didn’t “say hey” to you, he called you his bitch and threatened to set the Camaro on fire.”

  
Gansey’s hands slid down further, and his hands slipped deep down Ronan’s jeans to grab onto his hips.

  
“That’s just K’s style,” Ronan said placidly. “Listen, you don’t have anything to worry about; he’s a shit kisser. Dude’s bony and tastes like an ashtray.”

  
Gansey pulled Ronan in tighter as he rubbed himself against Ronan with a little more urgency, his breath growing ragged.

  
“He’s obsessed. And unhinged. It’s not--” Gansey’s voice was broken by a moan he didn’t quite succeed in biting back. “It’s not a good combination.”

  
“Come here,” Ronan said, as though this had settled something.

  
He sat back on his knees and yanked Gansey up so the smaller boy was straddling his lap. Moonlight splashed across Gansey’s face, flushed with heat and screwed up in a mix of desire and confusion that gave Ronan pangs in his chest. Ronan kissed Gansey deeply as he ran his hand down the other boy’s chest and began to tug at the drawstring of his sweatpants.

  
“Is this alright?” Ronan asked.

  
“I….” Gansey looked a little delirious, and he had his hand clamped around the back of Ronan’s neck. “You…?”

  
“Yes or no, Gansey, it’s not calculus.” Ronan’s words were clipped but his voice was mild, and his eyes were fixed on Gansey’s, searching for any flicker of second thoughts. Gansey stared at him for a moment, as though marvelling at Ronan’s existence. Ronan sighed.

  
“I want to.”

  
Gansey tugged his t-shirt off over his head, brushed his lips over Ronan’s, and said,

  
“Yes.”

  
Ronan might have said something else, but Gansey didn’t hear it, because Ronan’s hand was down his pants and Gansey had inhaled so sharply even he was startled by the sound.

Ronan pressed a firm kiss to Gansey’s shoulder as he worked his hand up and down slowly.

  
“First of all, you need to chill out. You’re going to give yourself an aneurysm and then I’m going to be pissed. Second of all…” Ronan tugged Gansey’s sweatpants down a bit in order to find greater purchase, and Gansey bit his lip to keep from waking the neighborhood. “I’ve wanted to do this forever."

  
Gansey reached out to steady himself on the bed frame, but only succeeded in dragging the disheveled sheets down onto the ground. He was already halfway there, Ronan realized. He worked a hickey into Gansey’s shoulder as he twisted and teased him closer and closer to the edge.

  
“Fuck, Ronan,” Gansey gasped when Ronan swiped his thumb over the tip. Ronan was taking his time, enjoying every shudder and half-formed word out of Gansey’s mouth. Gansey’s nails were digging into Ronan’s back hard enough to leave angry red crescent moons that would be visible in the morning, but Ronan didn’t care. All that mattered right now was watching Richard Campbell Gansey III come completely undone.

  
“Good,” Ronan said. “That’s it.”

  
Ronan laid Gansey down on his back and Gansey kissed him with an increasingly frenzied abandon. Ronan picked up speed as Gansey bucked beneath him, knotting his hands into Ronan’s shirt.

  
“You’re doing so good,” Ronan said, and Gansey arched his back so far that his throat was pointed to the ceiling. Then Gansey made a soft, strangled sound and it was finished. Gansey drew in a shaky breath, his body slack and overheated beneath his oldest friend. Ronan covered his face in feather-light kisses, undemanding and proud.

  
“Ronan…” Gansey began.

  
“I’m here,” Ronan said. ‘I’m not leaving.”

  
Whatever Gansey had to say, that seemed to settle it, and he let his head loll to the side as he caught his breath. Ronan threaded his fingers through Gansey’s hair rhythmically, tugging out the sweaty curls that had gathered at his temples, and said,

  
“Mmm.”

  
Gansey’s arms hadn’t moved from their position around Ronan’s neck. His breathing had deepened and slowed. Ronan closed his eyes to better appreciate the sound, and for a moment there was no noise between them except Gansey’s breath and the chirruping of the cicadas outside.

  
“Don’t fall asleep on me,” Ronan said finally. “I’m not hauling your ass into bed.”

  
“Five more minutes,” Gansey murmured into Ronan’s shirtfront.

  
Ronan gave him three before gently disentangling himself from Gansey and disappearing into his room. A moment later he emerged with a washcloth in his hand, which he tossed as Gansey.

  
“Clean up and come on. You’re bunking with me tonight.”

  
Gansey took his time hauling himself into a sitting position, eyebrows draw together in confusion. Before Nial’s death, Gansey and Ronan had napped in the back of tractors and passed out in Ronan’s narrow bed in the Barns together easily, without tension, without question. After his father passed, things seemed to complicate for Ronan. He needed more space. Gansey never pushed this issue.

  
"I didn’t go through to all that trouble for you to get yourself wound up again,” Ronan said with a toss of his head. He was using the voice of practiced disaffection he whipped out for the younger boys at school, not to mention the teachers, but Gansey saw the vulnerability in the way he was holding his bedroom door open. “I need you where I can keep an eye on you.”

  
Gansey smiled at him, and Ronan, looking suddenly bashful, ran a hand over the back of his shaved head.

  
“Just for the night, of course.”

  
“Of course.”

  
That night, Ronan and Gansey both slept the overpowering sleep of exhaustion, and Ronan, who woke to Gansey’s sleep-rough voice muttering his name, didn’t dream a single thing.

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to galdramani on tumblr for doing easily 2/3 of the plotting, betaing twice, and choosing the title. Which is to say, all the heavy lifting. I guess some would call this a dedication.


End file.
